Items kept scrolling across the display. Jedi Order Disaster; New Jedi, Dead Jedi; Skywalker Fails; Jedi Annihilated”—and on and on.

Other channels told the story in different terms, but corroborated the basic facts. Skywallker’s Jedi were dead. Massacred, by one of their own. Reading between the lines, it seemed Solo’s brat was the one.

Fett was in the Omab system, outbound, and glad of it. Nasty place.

Not that Skywalker’s HQ was much better—but he didn’t have to go there. He checked the routes outbound from it, and the most likely places a treacherous Padawan might go from there. No more than half a dozen.

Solo and Skywalker would both be after Ben Solo, and if he were there first…

Fett called up the contact map. He shut off all the other contracts and targets, leaving three. Solo, Skywalker, and the renegade. The last data on any of them was months old. Neither Skywalker nor Solo had tried very hard after the massacre. Solo left the princess, which made him an easier target, but then managed to lose himself pretty thoroughly. Skywalker, likewise, had gone off on a tour of obscure planets with connections to the Jedi. Only a Jedi, or a masochist, would visit most of those planets. Few, far between, in bad spots in the wild parts of space—good places to lose a tail.

But Benny? There weren’t too many Force users active now, and reports kept coming in of small actions, carried out by a few men with extraordinary ability. If he wasn’t one of them, it would be surprising.

All I have to do is work out their pattern. Then little Benny Solo will be locked up in my hold, and Solo and Skywalker will be looking for me, not the other way around.

Fett laughed.

“Hell.”

Fett thumbed the monitor off.

“ ‘Kylo Ren’ my ass,” he said.

As he thought, Ben Solo was one of the gang of Force users. This intel confirmed it. In fact, he was the leader, “Master of the Knights of Ren.” This Snoke could call the boy whatever he wanted. Ren’s identity was no more mysterious to anyone who thought about it than Vader’s had been. The brat was copying his Grampa, right down to the helmet and the robo voice.

But, now that Benny was near the top of the First Order, there was only so much even a Mandalorian could do to get at him, if he wanted to survive.

Solo was as elusive as ever.

That left Skywalker. The Jedi was getting careless: rumors were circulating he had been seen on Kof Lar, near Dathomir, a month or two back. A cold trail, but all trails were cold in space.

With a course set for the Kof Lar system, Fett engaged the hyperdrive.

If he were going to plot a search pattern, he’d need data. Fett reactivated the monitor, dismissing the intel on Ben Solo. A catalog of Jedi remains near Kof Lar replaced it. He started scrolling through it.